


Soft Skin

by stunrunner



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Character Death, Dream Bubbles, M/M, Non-Consensual Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-01
Updated: 2015-12-01
Packaged: 2018-05-04 07:57:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5326592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stunrunner/pseuds/stunrunner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Remember when Bro found out that leprechauns were made of felt?</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Crowbar wanders through dream bubbles, and discovers something (or rather, someONE) interesting.</p><p>Written for the first bonus round of HSWC 2014.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soft Skin

“Hurry,” Crowbar whispered to Trace as he glanced around the dark bank.

Trace shot him a dirty look. “I'm going as fast as I can. The trail's too old; I can barely see it.” He squinted at the safe's dial.

“Screw it,” Crowbar said as he dug a walkie-talkie out of his jacket pocket. “I know 'it's quiet, too quiet' is a cliche, but I want to be out of here before the Midnight Crew shows up. I'm calling in Cans.”

Trace sulked a bit, but Crowbar could deal with that later—right now, he was getting a bad feeling about this mission and just wanted to be on his way with the loot.

“Cans, get Quarters to cover your position and get in here,” he said. “We need your help with the safe.”

A loud crackle of static echoed through the hallway. Crowbar frowned. Had they robbed this bank before? He thought it was the first time, but it looked oddly familiar. 

“Copy,” a gruff voice grunted from the walkie-talkie. “Be there in two.”

Crowbar paused. Why was he expecting Trace to argue with him right—

“I told you we should've come earlier. Then the trails would have been fresh and I would have been able to—“

“Shut up and watch the door,” Crowbar interrupted. He massaged his temple gently with one hand. It wasn't quite a headache, more like a persistent sense of deja vu, like this had all happened before.

The ground shook slightly, and Cans appeared in the door, trotting over to the vault. He opened his mouth to speak, but Crowbar cut him off. “No, this isn't what happened.” He pointed at Cans. “You're not supposed to be here.”

“But you just called him,” Trace said. “You feelin' okay, boss?”

Crowbar barely heard him as the real memory burst from his subconscious. A looming figure out of the blackness, but not Cans, a black chitinous fist swinging from nowhere to connect with his face, a jumble of black and green all yelling, a bright flash of light and heat, and then—

“I'm dead, aren't I?” Crowbar asked.

The world blurred slightly out of focus for a moment. When he could see again, Trace was gone, Cans's eyes were a solid milky white, and the wall of the bank was riddled with bullet holes and burn marks. One wall of the vault had crumbled from the force of a blast, strewing debris across the floor.

“Took you long enough,” Cans grumbled. He peered at Crowbar. “Don't think you're the boss from my timeline, though. Ours has a scar down the cheek,” he said while tracing a line down his own face with a thick finger.

“Oh. I guess.” Crowbar looked at Cans. “Yeah, I'm guessing Boxcars never broke your nose?”

“Nope.” Cans gave a brief salute and a nod. “Good luck, boss.” A deep chuckle like an earthquake rumbled out of his chest. “Hopefully there ain't too many of us for you to find.”

Crowbar nodded back. He still wasn't sure what was going on, but if he was already dead, how much trouble could he really get into by wandering around? “You too.”

Cans disappeared into the shadows, leaving Crowbar alone in the dark bank. He knelt and picked up his hat from where it had fallen in the explosion, patting it a few times to send puffs of drywall dust into the air. He donned the hat like armor, and set off with a determined stride.

***

As time went on—it felt like weeks, but there was no way to tell if it was day or night, and Crowbar suspected time was screwy out here anyway—he started to get the hang of the shifting topography of the bubble. He was always pleased when he got to wander through the occasional long green hallway from the old Mansion, even if it was in eerie silence, the hundreds of clocks lining the walls all still and quiet. Most of the rest of the landscape was stitched together from various pieces of Midnight City and the surrounding suburbs. Every now and then, the dirty alleys would give way to a pocket of vast Alternian desert, or a stretch of a long-destroyed planet he barely remembered. He went around those.

Even more rarely, Crowbar would encounter a landscape that he was certain hadn't been pulled from his own memories. Once, he walked in awe through the dazzling golden towers of what had to be Prospit, and some time after that he strolled for a few hundred yards in a chaotic riot of black and white checkerboard. This had to be the effect of his dream bubble brushing up against someone else's, he reasoned, but whoever it was, they never appeared.

Crowbar was in the midst of checking out the Midnight Crew's hideout (the Felt had only been there once, but apparently his subconscious had remembered more of the layout than he'd realized) when he heard a clatter from Droog's room. All of the locales in the bubble had been nearly silent so far, so the noise sounded louder than a gunshot and sent his heart into his throat. It pounded hard as Crowbar raced around the burned, knife-scarred table in the main room of the hideout and through Droog's door.

The neat, minimalist bedroom extended only a few feet from the threshold before it gave way to what looked like another (decidedly messier) living space. A profusion of cables snaked in every direction across the floor, plugging into various speakers, monitors, computers, and some device Crowbar didn't recognize with a dizzying array of switches and dials. The only other furniture in the room was a futon across from the television and a large wooden chest, which looked oddly familiar to Crowbar though he couldn't think why.

The rest of the space in the room was littered with what looked like junk and trash. A stack of pizza boxes sat in one corner, headphones and game controllers lay wherever a careless hand had dropped them, and there were a few piles of...what were those? Crowbar couldn't quite make them out in the semi-illuminated gloom that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere in dream bubbles without a proper sun. He moved closer to the nearest pile, kneeling down to examine them. Were those...legs? And oddly glassy eyes... 

Crowbar reached to touch one, then started back violently with an involuntary yell. The surface had felt like skin. The forms were odd, but it looked like this was a pile of corpses. What sick fuck— Crowbar's thought was cut off by another noise from behind him. He whirled around and found himself face to face with...Caliborn's juju? It was perched precariously on top of the futon, grinning at him. Crowbar had only a second to wonder what the hell it was doing here before he felt something extremely sharp jabbing into the small of his back and heard a low drawl saying, “Hands up, then tell me who you are and what you're doin' here, if you like your kidneys.”

Crowbar raised his hands. He was pretty sure he couldn't die _again_ , but he'd been stabbed enough times to know that it hurt like a bitch. “My name's Crowbar. I'm dead—I assume you are too—and I'm looking for my friends.” He gestured with a thumb at the pile of corpses. “I don't know what kind of fucked-up thing you're doing here, but just let me leave and I promise you'll never see me again.”

The sharp point of pressure on his back disappeared, followed by the sound of a long blade sliding into a scabbard. Crowbar slowly lowered his hands and turned around. 

Crowbar wasn't tall, but the figure studying him towered over him by a full head. A pair of ridiculous pointy sunglasses obscured his eyes, and it looked like equally ridiculously pointy hair was confined under a gray baseball cap. Crowbar wondered if that was normal for whatever species this mystery creature was. He clearly wasn't a carapacian, cherub, or leprechaun; his skin looked rubbery and pink. His posture was loose and casual, but Crowbar could tell that if he thought there was a threat, that sword would be at his neck before he could blink.

The man kept his distance for the moment. “I guess 'who' was a stupid question. More relevant might be _what_ are you?” he asked, arching one eyebrow.

Crowbar shrugged. “We didn't really have a name for ourselves,” he said. “But I guess 'leprechaun' works.” His eyes darted back to the corpse pile. “Though I wouldn't think you'd need to ask.”

The man followed Crowbar's eyes. His facial expression barely changed, but a slight hesitation betrayed his confusion. He stepped forward and offered a hand. “Name's Bro Strider. I haven't seen anyone in these damn bubbles since I died, so I can honestly say it's a pleasure to meet you.”

Crowbar warily gripped Bro's hand in a tentative shake, almost gasping at the contact. Bro's hand—the part that wasn't covered in a tattered fingerless glove, anyway—was just as smooth and squishy as it looked, but he wasn't expecting it to be so warm. Was that normal? He was like a carapacian without a shell, which was an unsettling idea.

Crowbar clearly wasn't the only one surprised by the feel of skin. Bro's near-expressionless mask dropped for a moment as he almost gasped in...delight? Oh GPI, it looked like he was _excited_ about it.

“Holy shit,” he exclaimed, “you're a fucking puppet.”

“I am not—” Crowbar began indignantly before he was interrupted by Bro darting around him faster than he could see. His hands were everywhere, his burning-hot touch gently caressing Crowbar's jacket, the back of his neck, his leg, his wrist.

He pulled a gleaming switchblade he'd managed to grab from Slick years ago out of his pocket, wishing desperately that he'd held on to his crowbar, then flicked it open and swiped around randomly at the Bro-colored blur surrounding him. “Back the fuck off!” he snarled.

Bro materialized in front of him, raising his hands in a placating gesture even though he didn't seem at all threatened by the weapon. “Sorry,” he said. “It's just, ah, let's just say your kind doesn't exist where I'm from.” Was he...leering at him? “And that's a damn shame,” he added.

“Then what the fuck are those?” Crowbar asked, gesturing with the knife to the pile of plush corpses.

“These? OH. Oh god. No,” Bro said, picking one up. “Completely inanimate, and made entirely of synthetic material. See?” He held it out for Crowbar to inspect. He could see now that the eyes were plastic, and the seams had obvious stitching. He nodded, lowering the knife, and Bro dropped the toy back into the pile with a soft squeak.

“So,” Bro said, “you say you're looking for your friends?”

Crowbar nodded again. “I know at least two of them are already here.” He sighed. “Probably more by now, without me running things.”

“What are we waiting for, then?” Bro grabbed Caliborn's juju from the futon, securing it so it hung draped over his shoulders. 

“...We?”

Bro shrugged, causing the juju's head to loll eerily. “Why the hell not? You said it yourself, ain't seen anybody since you got here.”

“You said that.”

“Still true, though. Come on, you must have missed having company.” A blink and Bro was at his side, draping an arm over his shoulder like they were already best buds. The heat from his body radiated into Crowbar, and he could feel the firmness of sinewy muscle all through Bro's arm and torso. He... _had_ been alone for an awfully long time. Even the motion of Bro's hand “subtly” stroking his upper arm was...tolerable. That's all, he told himself. And it might be nice to have company.

“Fine,” he said. “Strength in numbers and all.”

“Excellent. So,” Bro said as they headed down the apartment stairs into the hottest sun Crowbar had ever felt, “tell me more about leprechauns.”


End file.
